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Saturday, April 8, 2017

Towards a New World Order in Eurasia: The 21st Century’s Great Game

Remarks at conference on Regional Cooperation Initiatives
in the Asia-Pacific and the Emergence of New Eurasian Geopolitics, Centre on
Asia and Globalisation, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy

One thing this week’s US air strikes in Syria highlight is
the fact that the sands are continuously shifting as regional and world powers
jockey for position in a future Eurasian world order. The strikes raise
questions that go far beyond potential greater US involvement in the Syrian
conflict. The answer to those questions will likely impact the role America may
play in Eurasia and the Asia Pacific.

What is surprising is not the fact that US President Donald
J. Trump ordered the launching of missiles. He has signalled with his
appointment of generals in key national security positions as well as his
budget proposals a more muscular, military-oriented approach to foreign policy.
What that meant has been evident since he came to office in January in greater
US military engagement in Yemen.

What is surprising is that days after Mr. Trump declared
that he was president of the United States, not president of the world, that he,
clearly taken aback by the horror of the Syrian chemical weapons attack, acted
to uphold international law and packaged it in terms of compassion. The US
strikes obviously countered allegations that he may be beholden to Russia as
well as not unfounded perceptions of Islamophobia or an anti-Muslim bias.

Mr. Trump may not have a clearly formulated policy
framework. Or maybe he does, but wants to keep everybody guessing. He has
repeatedly stated that he would not broadcast his intentions to the world.
Whichever it is, he is keeping China on its toes with regard to North Korea. He
is also keeping Iran on it toes, particularly given the chances that President
Hassan Rouhani could lose the forthcoming May election to a hard-liner.

On the notion, of the king is dead, long live the king,
predictions of a US withdrawal from its role as the guarantor of a world order
and US isolationism are premature, even if one is seeing a rollback on liberal
US values such as human rights. For Eurasia, this alongside numerous other
factors, means that the often unspoken notion that China may emerge as an
unchallenged power in Eurasia and beyond is equally premature.

No doubt China will be a dominant player, but it will be one
of two, and more probably three players, the United States and India being the
others. No doubt, China has advantages: it has a first starter advantage with
the scale and breadth of its One Belt, One Road initiative, its willingness to
take short-term losses for long-term gain, as well as its economic, financial
and growing military strength. Yet, all of that is insufficient to guarantee
that it will ultimately operate in a unipolar world. More likely it will have
to manoeuvre in a multi-polar world. And that may well be one of the takeaways
from this week’s missile strikes in Syria.

Several factors are likely to play key roles in the shaping
of a future Eurasian world order:

States across Eurasia may
be pivoting towards China, but many are hedging their bets. As Saudi Arabia’s
King Salman toured Asia last month, his son and powerful deputy crown prince,
Mohammed Bin Salman, travelled to Washington. Middle Eastern autocrats have
embraced Mr. Trump lock, stock and barrel, including his controversial travel
ban. If anything, the missiles strikes in Syria cemented that. The same hedging
strategy is true for democracies like Sri Lanka or Myanmar.

And that is the Achilles
Heel of the approach of whatever power, China, the United States or Russia,
jockeying for position in Eurasia. The 2011 Arab popular revolts are perceived
to have failed, a discussion that goes too far to embark on here, but the
lesson of those uprisings stands. Autocracies that fail to deliver are
inherently unstable and history teaches that most autocracies fail to deliver.
The United States, China and Russia are placing their bets to a large extent on
autocracies. In recent years China, has experienced the extent of the risk
involved in that approach, witness Libya, Sri Lanka and Myanmar. No bet is shakier
than the one Russia and Iran have placed on Bashar Al-Assad. Mr. Al-Assad is
damaged goods, a pariah, no matter what happens in Syria. Russia and China as
does the United States to a lesser extent run a similar risk in Central Asia.

China’s riskiest bet may
well be in Pakistan, the country where it is investing perhaps the most. The
risks are multi-fold. They include unease about the terms of Chinese investment
involving massive returns on investment expected by China that sink countries
into debt traps and raise questions about impact on local economies and the
lack of a trickledown effect. Energy is the one aspect of Chinese investment,
in what supporters describe as the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) and
critics have dubbed Colonizing Pakistan to Enrich China where the positive impact
on an energy-starved country is likely to be most immediate.

In anticipation of the
construction boom, the Mian family in Lahore invested $30 million to build a
second plant of Fast Cables, one of Pakistan’s largest cable producers. Instead
of benefitting from Chinese investment, the family fears bankruptcy. Cables for
Chinese-built energy projects are not procured in Pakistan. They are imported
tax free from China. For much the same reasons, protests have disrupted China’s
plans for a port and special economic zone in Sri Lanka’s Hambantota. The
city’s gleaming, Chinese-built airport operates all of four flights a day. The
story repeats itself elsewhere in Eurasia. The Federation of Pakistani Chambers
of Commerce and Industry has raised grave doubts about the impact of CPEC,
noting that the demography of Balochistan, a thinly populated area of 70,000
inhabitants would dramatically change with the influx of up two million Chinese
and Pakistanis from other parts of the country. The cost of the debt trap in
terms of land concessions that change demography is already evident in
countries like Tajikistan and has sparked protests in Myanmar. A Pakistani
financial brokerage calculates that the Chinese rate of return on investment is
a whopping 40 percent.

What makes Pakistan China’s
riskiest investment goes beyond the pattern of commercial terms that are
perceived as not being equitable. The port of Gwadar, a key node in China’s
string of pearls, a network of ports across Eurasia, was first inaugurated some
nine years ago. It’s not much more active than the airport in Hambantota.
Balochistan is engulfed in an insurgency whose connotations go far beyond
ethnic and nationalist aspirations. Political violence in Balochistan is as
much an expression of long-standing local grievances as it is linked to a Pakistani
state that sees militant proxies as part of its security, defense and foreign
policies. Pakistan has been able to do so with the support in the 1980s of the
United States during the anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan, and since then with
the backing of Saudi Arabia and China. The result is a state in which Sunni
Muslim ultra-conservatism has been embedded in significant segments of society
as well as key branches of the state creating an environment in which the
potential of violence is significantly enhanced. While Gwadar idles, Chabahar,
an Indian-built port in Iran, some 60 kilometres further West is likely to push
ahead.

Competition between Gwadar
and Chabahar leads one automatically to the role of Middle Eastern players,
primarily Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Iran in shaping the future
architecture of Eurasia. Pakistan is emblematic of the impact of Saudi backing of
ultra-conservatism in cooperation with governments willing to opportunistically
play politics with religion. Yet, the rise of Sunni Muslim ultra-conservatism
and limited Iranian successes in countering it contributes to the groundwork
for domestic strife and instability across Eurasia.

Despite widespread
perceptions and Saudi success in ensuring that ultra-conservatism is an
influential player in Muslim majority countries and minority communities alike,
Saudi Arabia has a weak hand that ultimately makes it unlikely that it will
come out on top. That is nowhere more evident than in energy and particularly
gas. What will determine the future of Eurasia’s energy landscape will not be
Saudi oil but Iranian and Turkmen gas. Energy scholar Michael Tanchum estimates
that Iran will likely have 24.6 billion cubic metres of gas available for
export in the next five years. That is enough to service two of Iran’s three
major clients, Turkey, Europe and China. Likelihood is that it will certainly
keep Turkey, leaving it with having to choose between Europe and China.

The jockeying for position
in Eurasia resembles a game of Risk. The game’s outcome is unpredictable.
Wracked by internal political and economic problems, Europe may not have the
wherewithal for geopolitical battle. Yet, despite a weak hand, it could come
out on top in the play for energy dominance. US backing of India in the Great
Game and efforts to drive wedges into mostly opportunistic alliances such as
cooperation between China and Russia and Russia and Iran could help Europe
compensate for its weakness. Similarly, a hard US approach towards Iran,
particularly if Mr. Rouhani is defeated in the next election buys Saudi Arabia
time. Assuming, last week’s missile strikes in Syria were not a one-off after
which the United States reverts to a more isolationist attitude, greater US assertiveness
could temporarily drive China and Russia and Russia and Iran closer together. That,
however, would not make potential, if not inevitable differences between them
go away.

The missile strikes may
well have had another effect that is crucial for Eurasia. If much of Trump’s
initial period in the White House was marked by a sense of insecurity and
defensiveness about the legitimacy of his election, the missile strikes that
enjoyed bipartisan and broad international support may have put that behind him.
That has implications for the impact of US investigations into Russian meddling
in the US elections that benefitted not only Russia but also China. And it has
an impact on populists in Europe with hopes for electoral success in France and
Germany who in many ways are inspired by Trump’s success and may not want to
stray too far away from his policies despite initial criticism of the strikes
by the likes of French populist leader Marie le Pen.

The long and short of this all is:

First and foremost, the future
of Eurasia is up for grabs

Multiple players, major ones
like China, India and the United States, and lesser ones like Russia, Japan and
Middle Eastern states, are jockeying for position.

No one player is likely to
emerge as the clear winner.

Energy and ports are key
pawns in Eurasia’s Great Game

Black swans could well
determine the fate of various players. No swan is bigger than the inherent, if
not always immediately apparent, instability of autocratic regimes that have
yet to truly deliver. That is certainly true for Central Asian states but
equally true for Middle Eastern ones, including those like Saudi Arabia that
recognize that the status quo can no longer be maintained and that survival
depends on successful efforts to upgrade autocracy and bring it into the 21st
century.

In a world of
interdependence, it may well be developments in states like those in Central
Asia and the Middle East that determine the fate of strategies of the major players.

And just to end with more
black swans, that no doubt others will pick up on: uncertainties in the region
we are in today, Southeast Asia. Major among those are Chinese territorial
claims in the East and South China Seas.

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About Me

James M DorseyWelcome to The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer by James M. Dorsey, a senior fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies. Soccer in the Middle East and North Africa is played as much on as off the pitch. Stadiums are a symbol of the battle for political freedom; economic opportunity; ethnic, religious and national identity; and gender rights. Alongside the mosque, the stadium was until the Arab revolt erupted in late 2010 the only alternative public space for venting pent-up anger and frustration. It was the training ground in countries like Egypt and Tunisia where militant fans prepared for a day in which their organization and street battle experience would serve them in the showdown with autocratic rulers. Soccer has its own unique thrill – a high-stakes game of cat and mouse between militants and security forces and a struggle for a trophy grander than the FIFA World Cup: the future of a region. This blog explores the role of soccer at a time of transition from autocratic rule to a more open society. It also features James’s daily political comment on the region’s developments. Contact: incoherentblog@gmail.comView my complete profile